Re: More than one bluetooth device?
Re: More than one bluetooth device?
- Subject: Re: More than one bluetooth device?
- From: Daniel Birns <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 12:33:28 -0700
I've unpackaged the Microsoft mouse and the results are interesting.
First: from USB prober:
Device VendorID/ProductID: 0x045E/0x0713 (Microsoft Corporation)
Product String: 2 "Microsoft\256 Wireless Notebook
Presenter Mouse 8000"
My purpose here is *not* to use this device, but rather to try to
understand the current state of the bluetooth market, and how we can
best support it.
This product consists of a mouse and pre-paired bt dongle.
Here's what I've discovered:
1) By default the bt dongles operates in what microsoft seems to call
"limited Bluetooth mode". That is, to the OS, it's a USB keyboard/
mouse, and not a bluetooth interface. This is true on windows as
well as the mac. And I'm able to use bluetooth alongside it on the
mac and windows. Thus there are *really* 2 bluetooth transceivers
operating, but only 1 is recognized by the OS as such.
2) With some trickiness, though nothing that's not documented, I was
able to get Windows to recognize it as a general purpose bluetooth
adapter, discoverable and so on. This trickiness included installing
the software (intellipoint 6.1) that came with it, installing a
recommended windows hotfix, and holding down a button on the dongle
for 5 seconds.
3) I cannot get the mac to recognize the dongle as a bluetooth
transceiver.
Questions:
1) by "limited Bluetooth mode", does MSoft simply mean that the OS
isn't recognizing the bluetooth transceiver? Or is this part of the
bluetooth standard?
2) Does the mac not recognize it because it's not on a list of
supported bt transceivers? Is there a list somewhere of which
dongles the mac does recognize, and perhaps a roadmap of their
intentions in this area?
--Daniel
Daniel,
Sorry I misread your question. An external BT dongle will override
the internal one, I have a class 1 Edimax (highly recommended as it
uses the Cambridge Silicon chipset and works right out of the box,
unlike the Broadcom-based ones) doing just that. The only problem
has been that when the Mac is in discovery state, both the internal
and external devices respond when polled (under 10.4.10, not sure
about 10.5). This is a problem because they both have the same
name, and it is not deterministic as to which one responds first so
you can't bet on which one will be first in the list.
Who knows which chipset your dongle uses, there is a chance MacOS
will not support it, or only support it in limited ways.
Tim.
On 31 Oct 2007, at 23:11, Daniel Birns wrote:
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the feedback. The question is not one of having
benefit. Here's the question: Today I bought a mouse that has a
usb-bt dongle in the box. Say I'm a naive user. I put it on my
computer, not knowing anything.
What's going to happen? Actually I'm going to find out soon,
because I'm going to try it!
--Daniel
On Oct 31, 2007, at 3:59 PM, Tim Hewett wrote:
Daniel,
I don't expect there would be any benefit of having more than one
Bluetooth interface active, it may make things worse as they may
interfere with each other. I say that on the basis that all
Bluetooth comms occur in the same frequency band, with frequency
hopping used to help reduce collisions between independent devices.
The only benefit I could see is when the devices are different
classes, e.g. using a class 1 device for services which need
greater range, but a lower power one for short range things like
keyboard and mouse. This would be a conscientious way to reduce
your interference impact on your neighbours.
Tim.
On 31 Oct 2007, at 19:01, email@hidden
wrote:
Can a mac have more than one bluetooth device? I tried plugging
in a
dongle, and I believe what happened was that the dongle replaced
the
builtin bluetooth device.
Also the api for finding out info about the bluetooth device
seems to
only support one device. Is there a definitive answer?
--Daniel
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